Just what the doctor ordered. An unholy combination of a 1980’s Schwarzenegger movie with a Fast and Furious movie, Pathaan comes roaring into theaters attempting to blow the competition away by upping the ante over and over again. It’s loud, ludicrous, and insanely cheesy. But when the action is in high gear…so, so satisfying.
Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger would have salivated for parts like these. Extremist Pakistani General Qadir (Manish Wadhwa) employs Jim Cal (John Abraham), an apolitical mercenary, to plan a devastating attack on India and various countries across the planet. Jim stays one step ahead of Colonel Sunil Luthra (Ashutosh Rana) and the Indian government, making them desperate and scared. They turn to former retired Indian military ops professional Nandini Grewal (Dimple Kapadia) for guidance. Naturally, she goes to the legendary Pathaan (Shah Rukh Khan), who creates the Joint Operation and Covert Research (JOCR) department to surveil and hopefully bring Jim to justice. Although gorgeous, badass complications in the form of ISI agent Rubai (Deepika Padukone) get in the way.
Pathaan follows a lot of classic action movie plots to a T. There’s an incredible intro for our lead, something to show how badass they are. His opposite is a dastardly villain, handsome and hilariously self righteous (though to Pathaan’s credit, Jim has a real legit reason to be). And in the middle is our love interest, torn between duty and newfound love for our hero, with the Indian flair of a music video character intro. Throw in some shady government shenanigans, moral compromise, country hopping, crosses and double crosses, incredible hero shots, and cheesy flirting stitched together between action sequences, and bada bing bada boom, we got ourselves a feature film! The big complaint I guess is our flashback, which usually is like 10-20 minutes long, but in Pathaan they basically cram the prequel into the entire movie. At one point I definitely was watching a flashback within a flashback, which is just, wonderfully silly.
Pathaan’s make or break is the action sequences, though. Thankfully, right from the get go, we’re in the right hands of director Siddharth Anand. In the first 20 minutes, Pathaan has survived an intense interrogation sequence and maneuvered through a covert military facility indoors with several bad guys inside of a helicopter, culminating in a giant explosion, obviously. Dubai, Paris, Lahore, each big city gets a big action setpiece of some kind, the Dubai one being the standout. And when something REALLY crazy has to happen, we’re off in rural Russia train hopping with Pathaan to escape the bad guys and death at the same time. Every chase with every vehicle in every terrain you can think of happens in Pathaan, giving the movie this never ending kinetic energy it never lets up and shifts just enough to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.
If you’re an action move junkie, go see Pathaan on the biggest, loudest screen imaginable. You definitely will hear ringing in your ears afterwards, and you’re gonna need a nap as you come down from the dopamine rush. The only way Pathaan could have been more perfect action catnip for me was for Pathaan to winkingly say “Salud mi familia” at a dinner table with his military brothers and sisters. I would have lost it.